CFP: [Postcolonial] Non-Western Living Epics and Myths: Memory, Community and

In 1919 A. A. Macdonnels had commented that "Probably no work of worldliterature, secular in origin, has ever produced so profound an influenceon the life and thought of a people as the Ramayana." On September 2007this observation was re-enacted when the Archaeological Survey of Indiagot deadlocked in a legal battle with the Hindu political hardliners overa shipping canal project in the Indian Ocean known as the ProjectSethusamudram. The project involves destruction of a series ofunderwater islands built of sand and limestone and are otherwise knownas Rama's bridge. According to a popular Hindu belief, the army of monkeysthat helped Rama to reach Lanka, also built this bridge. On September 11,2007 the Archeological Survey of India published a report stating thatthe bridge is a natural formation and that there is no scientific proofthat supports the belief that this bridge was built by Rama's army.Moreover they also stated that Valmiki's Ramayana or Tulasidas'sRamcharitmanas are mythological stories and hence cannot be accepted as"historical" truths. Following this report, the world saw anunprecedented wave of support in favor of keeping the bridge. Supportalso came from the diasporic Hindu political groups, followed byprolonged political and social agitations by the proponents of Hindutvain India. Finally, on September 14, the Indian government had to relentand declare publicly that Rama was, indeed, of a "historical" characterand that the language of the ASI report requires a thorough revision.

This is a classic example of how Ramayana remains enmeshed within thecomplexities of the communal quotidian life of South Asia in significantand complicated ways as a "living epic." A "living epic," therefore, is acultural-textual entity that, unlike the textually fixed canonicalversions of the western epic tradition, continues to evolve and morph inmultiple narrative modes and plot-outlines, often contesting andcomplicating each other. Thus, "living epics," by definition, resistattempts to be tied down to official, standardized versions. This becomesespecially evident if we attempt to compare the respective ideologicaluniverses of the medieval North Indian poet Tulasidas' Ramcharitmanas, anattempt to interpret Ramayana from a Bhakti perspective and MichaelMadhusudan Dutta's nineteenth century rendition of the epic inMeghnadabadh Kavya (The Slaying of Meghnada). Similarly, one can alsocontend that the other South Asian epic Mahabharata too operates as acomplex epic tradition with multiple and often contesting cultural forms.As the noted Indian folklorist A.K. Ramanujan reminds us, The Mahabharataprovides materials and allusions to every artistic genre--from plays toproverbs, from folk performances to movies and T.V. Indeed, theMahabharata and the Ramayana have appeared as serials, week after week inpopular Tamil weeklies. When they were published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,they became and probably still are, the most read paperback renditioned inEnglish of the epics [...] Thus, a text like the Mahabharata is not a text buta tradition.

This panel is interested in exploring the scope of the South Asian andother non-western living epics as they evolve in interactions withmultiple literary and artistic forms, influencing a culture's religious,political and social dimensions and invoking multitude of audiencereactions and responses. Questions that the contributions might addressinclude but are not limited to:

-- What role do living epics play in constructing national identities and imagined communities?-- How have the epic traditions in India/South Asia contributed to the consolidation and reification of the dominant classed/gendered/ casteicized hegemony? Similarly, how have the epics been used by the marginalized groups in South Asia as modes of narrative and political resistance? (One can think of the distinctly "women's perspective" presented in Chandrabati and Molla's attempts to rewrite Ramayana from Sita's point of view, or, the multiple re-interpretations of the Slaying of Sambuka episode of the Ramayana by the Dalit artists and writers)--Is it possible to think of the re-interpretations of the epics as falling into predominantly two different kinds--the authoritative telling and the oppositional telling(as scholars like Paula Richman has suggested)?--What were the narrative/artistic/ideological/political choices made by 19th/20th century South Asian writers and artists when they revisited the epics?--How are identities and histories performed within the performative genre of the epic?--How have epics functioned in diaspora (e.g. The Ramlila in Caribbean or Fiji, the televised epics and the Indian Diaspora, the Diaspora and the Hindu fundamentalist politics)?--How have Indian epics influenced the culture industry, both within and outside India? ( TV serials, comic books, Bollywood films, anime, cartoons)-- How does a folkloristic approach complicate our knowledge and study of the India epics?--Are these concerns generic to all living epics?--What is the pertinence of these questions with respect to living epics that are beyond the realms of South Asian tradition?--Can these questions be addressed in context to a mythological character that does not belong to any epic tradition per se but have similar importance among its significant audience as epic characters?